Doctors' Commons

Like the Inns of Court of the common lawyers, the society had buildings with rooms where its members lived and worked, and a large library.

The college still consisted of its president (the Dean of Arches) and of those doctors of law who, having regularly taken that degree in the universities of Oxford or Cambridge, and having been admitted advocates in pursuance of the rescript of the archbishop of Canterbury, were elected "fellows" in the manner prescribed by the charter.

[4] As anticipation of an impending abolition grew, a reluctance among the members to admit new fellows increased, for this would dilute the proceeds of any winding up of the society's property.

[5] Critically, the Act also made it lawful for the Doctors' Commons, by a vote of the majority of its fellows, to dissolve itself and surrender its Royal Charter, the proceeds of dissolution to be shared among the members.

[5] A motion to dissolve the society was entered on 13 January 1858, setting the path towards its final meeting: the end of Trinity Term, 10 July 1865.

"[4] In the same-era novel The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, the solicitor of Gray's Inn Square Mathew Bruff notes, "I shall perhaps do well if I explain in this place, for the benefit of the few people who don't know it already, that the law allows all wills to be examined at Doctor's Commons by anybody who applies, on payment of a shilling fee.

"[10] Doctors' Commons is mentioned anachronistically in the much later short story The Adventure of the Speckled Band by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in which Sherlock Holmes apparently obtains some information there about the will of the wife of Dr Grimesby Roylott of Stoke Moran.